Deliver direction and vision for both the IT and Equipment Departments for a fast-growing construction firm. Demonstrating an ability to lead, learn and adapt allowed for the expansion of role and responsibility within the organization. In addition to directing the IT department, oversees the Equipment Department, which manages over $14M in large assets within the organization. Assets range from specialized welding equipment to heavy duty cranes.
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3 Key Takeaways
Episode Show Notes
Thad Lutgen (23 years in Business IT) and Phil Howard talk about:
Transcript
Speaker 0 | 00:09.664
Welcome back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today we are talking with Thad Lutkins. He is Director of Equipment and IT at LPR Construction. That’s really not a small thing whatsoever because you have… a ridiculous amount of kind of like vehicles and stuff that you guys like lease and rent and take care of and all that stuff out there. Right. So first of all, welcome to the show and, um, let’s just plug your company for us. What are you guys doing?
Speaker 1 | 00:37.357
Oh, thank you, Phil. I appreciate you inviting me to be over here. Um, and, and your podcasts are great. So give you a little plug there. I’ve been listening to those and I’ve been very impressed with,
Speaker 0 | 00:49.123
uh, and thank you for reminding me you’ve had on here. Yeah, no, thank you. And honestly, you’re reminding me to do something that I always forget to do that everyone, like I have podcast coaches and they tell me to do these things and I never do them. And that is, if you like the podcast, could you please go on to Apple iTunes or whatever it is, search that. It’s not that easy to do. Please do it for me. You’d really be doing me a favor if you like this and rate our podcast and give us an honest review, right? Honestly, give us an honest review on whatever the platform it is that you’re listening to. So Thad, thank you. moving on to construction vehicles.
Speaker 1 | 01:24.081
Yeah, so I, you know, started my career here at LPR 21 years ago. It’s quite a while ago, but it’s been a fun ride. The company has been in business for 41 years, and that’s not an easy task in construction. It’s something that we’ve evolved. considerably. And I was brought in to change things over with our IT side of the business. IT is not typically something you think and couple together with construction, but our company, we’re spread across the entire United States. We erect steel for large buildings, some of the buildings that we’ve come across and built. all the steel in the Atlanta Braves stadium. If you’ve seen that, that stadium is just beautiful and gorgeous in Colorado. Phil, I know you’re from Colorado Coors field. We installed all the steel in Coors field. We don’t do just stadiums. We also do large rocket stands. That’s another thing that we’ve been building as of recently.
Speaker 0 | 02:38.584
Like literally the thing that, that holds the rocket standing up straight that the rocket takes off from.
Speaker 1 | 02:45.008
Absolutely. Yep. So we’ve been doing a lot of that. We’ve been working with NASA. We’ve been working with a few other, I can’t really disclose those companies, but a few other companies out there that do launches in Florida and Texas as well.
Speaker 0 | 03:06.083
Okay. So Wicked Cool. What’s even cooler is that you’ve been at the company for like 20 years. Is that right?
Speaker 1 | 03:14.248
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 03:15.408
Do they give you like, do you get like a pen or a watch or something? You know, like, Hey, thank you for being with us for 20 years. Here’s a pen. Um, I’m joking. You’re like, no, I didn’t, I didn’t even get that. Um, but that’s okay. You don’t need that. Just, you know, just please let me know that it is valued here. That’s all I need to know. And we’re going to get onto that, but real quick, seriously, 1999, what did the network look like there when you first came over? Were you, I mean, information systems manager in 1999. What were you doing? What were you doing back then?
Speaker 1 | 03:48.461
I was a one man shop at that point in time. I got showed up. We had one server, which was Novell NetWare 4.1. You can remember that. Novell NetWare group wise was on that server,
Speaker 0 | 04:04.554
which is where I was in 1999. You’d be like, no, Phil, you wouldn’t remember anything, but keep going. It’s not a good story.
Speaker 1 | 04:14.521
It’s probably a good story,
Speaker 0 | 04:16.823
not a good picture. But go on.
Speaker 1 | 04:20.725
Yeah, so I show up here. We have no remote connectivity. We are actually taking hard copy documents. And fax machine was big at that point in time. But we didn’t even get to that point where we were faxing stuff. We were taking invoices. documents, construction bids. All that was put into a manila folder, put into a FedEx envelope, and shipped to the office or shipped to the job site, depending on which direction you need to go. So it was all snail mail was our was our mode of communication, which
Speaker 0 | 05:01.941
Isn’t that kind of cool? There’s some people out there that are probably like, what? The fax machine was big? The fax machine was big. That was a big deal. That’s crazy. When we talk about that now, we’re kind of like, huh.
Speaker 1 | 05:16.050
Right, right. Fax machine, it’s hard to find one. I mean, if you ever need to, you have to go hunt one down. It used to be that, shoot, everybody, every business that you went to, that was the pinnacle of their technology. Technology was like. a fax machine. It’s a Hewlett Packard. Wow. You’re, you’re spending a lot of money there. But that we, we truly evolved. You know, I saw that I said, boy, we, we, we really need to expand what we have. And as far as capabilities, we need to start leveraging technology. First and foremost, let’s look at what we have as far as our network. Let’s Let’s focus on what exactly we can do in the short term to improve everybody’s lives. And one of those things was, let’s get rid of Novell. Novell serves its purpose. What did it do?
Speaker 0 | 06:17.015
What were you guys using it for day to day?
Speaker 1 | 06:19.776
So it was a file server, basically. I mean, it was a file server. And it also did like what Microsoft does now with Active Directory. It had that sort of… same structure in Novell network in which it would manage your users. You could assign email addresses. It would create a group wise account for you so you could email back and forth. It was a solid product, but like a lot of technology and technology companies where they sit on their laurels and they feel like they have such a… Good product. They don’t need to innovate. They don’t need to adapt. They don’t need to change. And they continue going down that same path. And they struggle when newer technologies come out that are easier to use, that have a GUI interface. I mean, Novell did not have a GUI interface. It was all command line driven.
Speaker 0 | 07:20.859
Like F1, F2, Shift, F1, 3, that type of stuff.
Speaker 1 | 07:25.102
Oh, it was crazy. It was crazy. Yeah. So there’s a lot of, I mean. Eventually, they started integrating their GUI interface, but for the most part, it was all just text-based. And so it made it very complicated when you had issues. You had to call somebody to get support. And back then, really, you didn’t have like pull up your web page. type in Novell Network and Google that and try to figure out exactly what’s going on with your issue. You had to actually reach out to Novell specifically and get one of their support team staff to help you out. And hopefully it wasn’t in the middle of the night because they didn’t have a 24-7 call center.
Speaker 0 | 08:14.613
Just in general, would you say software support is worse than telecom support? Or, I mean, what do you think? I’m just thinking of like support. How’s your vendor support in general when you call vendors?
Speaker 1 | 08:29.082
You know, our vendor support, it depends on the product. But if you’re going to be looking at software versus, you know, physical telecom, let’s say cell phone, we actually have, we’ve broken up with our support system on the telecom. And we actually use a third-party vendor to help us navigate that. Because we will spend 15, 20 minutes on a simple password change for somebody’s voicemail call. One of the help desk folks, I don’t want him spending 15, 20 minutes or even longer just to change a voicemail password. This is… you know, now it’s, it’s a little more automated with website, but this was, you know, three years ago,
Speaker 0 | 09:26.694
you know,
Speaker 1 | 09:27.034
thank you.
Speaker 0 | 09:27.495
We call those, um, we call those Mac attacks, move and change. I got like a Mac attack, you know? Um, I had a Mac attack the other night. If I, if I let myself go, I’ll, I’ll eat two or three big Macs at once. I’ve been on like, on a pretty good diet. I’ve been on a pretty good diet here for like a month and a half. And every time I drive by McDonald’s, my wife thinks I’m crazy. She hates it anyway. She’s like, how can you eat that crap? I’m like, I still, I could eat three of them right now. Um,
Speaker 1 | 09:55.040
more importantly,
Speaker 0 | 09:57.163
more importantly, Over the years, you’ve been through a lot of, I would say, changes. You kind of were hinting at it when you said, you know, we’re good. We don’t need to innovate. So you’ve seen that. You’ve seen kind of the ebb and flow, maybe the sine curve of executive management and having to request upgrades and changes. And you’re not the only one. There’s many other IT directors, managers, CTOs, whatever out there that have dealt with the… They may have had a vision. They may have known that they need to change. They may have a vision for kind of moving the technology forward and run into various different walls, so to speak. How do you justify upgrades and spend where you might not necessarily have the money in the budget or maybe you guys don’t run off a very strict budget or whatever it is, but how are you selling? these things to executive management at a construction company where you might have some people that, not to stereotype construction people at all, but you might have a little bit more pushback than say a technology firm?
Speaker 1 | 11:15.746
That’s a great question. And really, that’s something I’ve been working on this past year and something I’ve really been focusing on now. What I had to do is look at the big picture, look at the entire organization. We at LPR, we have a very forward-thinking CEO, Link Turner. He’s done a fantastic job of bringing in different systems to run the business. One of those systems that he’s brought in and… I don’t know if you’ve heard of it or not, but it’s called Traction. It’s a book called Traction. Traction is written by Geno Wickman. A little background on Geno. His dad was an executive management consultant, went into companies, had them read specific books and bring those ideas to the organization to steer and get the company moving. the direction that they needed to go to be successful.
Speaker 0 | 12:29.292
Gotcha. Well,
Speaker 1 | 12:30.632
he really went in and took all of the different books that are out there, the management books, and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Speaker 0 | 12:41.555
Sure.
Speaker 1 | 12:42.035
That’s great. Pulled all the really focused items that he felt like really drove the organization and pulled those and highlighted those and made that. part of a complete entrepreneurial system. So there’s an entrepreneurial organization system, operating system. So it’s called the EOS that we use in our company. And part of the EOS that we run and we’ve established is the fact that when you look at the entire organization, you have to… Really focus on what your core values are. That’s one of the big principles is figuring out your core values of your organization. And those are what truly drive change and drive you to move forward and expand your capabilities as a company. Then with those core values, you establish what’s called a VTO. And that’s a vision traction. organizer that I’m just so thrilled. We haven’t had that. This came into play maybe three or four years ago in the organization. And the vision traction organizer, it lays out, first of all, what your core values are. You know what your core values are and you measure it against those in your department. It also lays out a… one-year plan on what we are going to accomplish in this next year as an organization.
Speaker 0 | 14:28.012
Yep.
Speaker 1 | 14:29.473
Then it pulls in a three-year plan. So you got the short term, a little bit longer term. Yep. And then it actually makes a leap out into a 10-year plan in which those are the big audacious goals that everybody puts out there. They’re scary goals like we’re going to be a… billion dollar company uh by 2030 we’re gonna there’s there’s a lot of big goals in there but The nice thing is, is that we have these all listed and shared with the entire organization.
Speaker 0 | 15:06.829
So talk to me. So how does this apply to, how are you taking this and applying it to IT in your department? And I remember when we talked briefly about this before, you talked about this people analyzer thing, which is really, I got to know about that. I got to know about that. So how are you, okay. So like, you know, you got, you have the vision. I’m assuming that. trickles down to your department, you have a vision for your department and how are you, how is your department, how are you mixing this in? Like, so first of all, I think, I think the big thing here is a, you’re on a level of communication with executive management and understanding, you understand very clearly from the top down, you understand very clearly what the vision of the company is from a one year, three year, 10 year plan. And how now is IT going to contribute to that plan?
Speaker 1 | 15:57.441
Yeah. So And so it’s no secret. We know what the goals are. I have to tell you in the past, that wasn’t clear. It really wasn’t clear. It was something that was an enigma. You had to guess. And I know there’s a lot of other IT directors that are out there. They’re in that position right now.
Speaker 0 | 16:17.755
They are in that position now and they don’t have the benefit of working for a company with a visionary leader, right? Like you said, Link, right? Link Turner. who’s going to bring in all these systems and processes and everything like that, they could go have those conversations with executive management and say, hey, what are we trying to do here?
Speaker 1 | 16:38.022
Yes. And prior to that, I did drive a lot of those conversations. But it was interesting, Phil. You think that the and I’m not knocking anybody that was in the executive team, but it it was a little different twist and a different view than from one executive to the other.
Speaker 0 | 17:01.924
Because we’re humans and we wake up every day and we have a family and we’re basically trying to put food on the table and live our lives and do these things. So, yeah, it probably would be different from one to the next.
Speaker 1 | 17:11.648
Right, right. So it’s a little interpretation. This makes it a little more concrete in which I can look this over and I can see what our one-year goals are when it comes to budget time. I pull this up and I look at, okay, what am I trying to accomplish here? One of the big things is we want a culture of accountability. That’s one of the one-year goals that we have, culture of accountability, and we are profit protectors. I need to put my business cap on and think of it using an IT. background and being able to adapt and adjust to what the organization is trying to accomplish. And, you know, if I’m a profit protector, number one, I need to be very concerned about any ransomware attacks. I need to be very concerned about any viruses. I need to be concerned about people hacking into the system, stealing confidential information. There’s a… There’s all kinds of different ways that you can take that and view that actual goal that we have in the one year goal. And we can we can apply that. I also took it a next step. If we’re holding people accountable now, that’s part of that whole piece.
Speaker 0 | 18:40.499
Yeah. It makes it easier for end users. It makes it easier to tell end users like, hey, you know, you’re accountable for not clicking on that stupid thing.
Speaker 1 | 18:49.886
Yes, you’re accountable.
Speaker 0 | 18:53.289
Because you would kill the profit.
Speaker 1 | 18:56.351
Yes. Yeah. If you have to spend a million dollars on a ransomware attack, there goes all of your profit out the door and you’re stuck holding the bag. And that is my responsibility. That’s the way I look at it. It’s like, okay. As the IT director, I need to make sure I’m communicating that to all users. Also, on top of that, we are also looking at if we have an issue, something comes up, we can hold other people accountable. If they continue to behave that way, we have this to back us up and say, hey, we’ve talked to you about this. You have issues. Either we’re going to take…
Speaker 0 | 19:39.750
access completely away or um we’re going to give you the fax machine back one of the other um um that’s like you know we’re taking email away you now must mail things again um what’s the people analyzer or is that the people analyzer and that’s how you’re analyzing people
Speaker 1 | 20:02.629
via the vision. Yes, that’s a great tool that we use to evaluate. We do this on a quarterly basis. Part of the system requires that you give feedback to your employees on a quarterly basis, which is amazing because most of the time you have annual reviews and quarterly is not something that is typically done throughout the business world. But we sit down, we have a scorecard that we go through that’s actually the first three components of the people analyzer is do you get it? Do you get your job? Do you want your job? Big question. Maybe somebody’s fantastic at what they do, but they just absolutely hate what they do. and don’t really want it? Or do you have the capacity to actually do the job that you’ve been asked to and you’ve been hired for?
Speaker 0 | 21:08.989
Capacity, ability, do you have the talent level? Can you do it? Like you’re a heart surgeon, but you never went through medical school, like that type of thing.
Speaker 1 | 21:17.634
Exactly, exactly. So those are the three core first questions that are asked. And if anybody gets a minus on there, that is a red flag that… they potentially are in the wrong seat in that position or potentially the seat is not the proper seat for the organization. So you’ve got to look at it very clearly. And is it something that they can overcome? You need to think about that. If it is that example that you used, are they going to be able to go to medical school in the next six months and figure it out? Yeah. Not likely. So you have to evaluate, is this person, is he going, are they going to be able to make that transition to the next level? And if not, then really, ultimately, you put them on notice, you let them know that you’ve got the next quarter to work on this and improve it. If you don’t come back with improvements, then. Sorry, that’s strike two. And if you come back again, strike three, you’re out.
Speaker 0 | 22:29.513
So I’m assuming you like what you do. I’m assuming you want to keep doing what you’re doing because you’ve been there for 20 years. And I’m pretty sure you have the capacity to do IT. So for your scorecard, I think we’re getting a check mark on every box. Let me ask you this and apply all this stuff that we’re talking about to it. How would you say your end users in your company, do they get IT? Do they want the systems that you’re putting in place? And are you providing systems that give them the ability to do their job better? And how do you know that you are?
Speaker 1 | 23:17.840
Yeah, that’s definitely one of the big questions. are are we adding value is really what you’re getting at is it adding value to the organization or yeah and then i’m going to go even a step further and how do you prove that you’re adding a value how are you measuring that right yeah so it’s it’s funny that you you talk about that because this is also can be tied into um the the eos system that we’re using that they were in the organization um but you know To answer your first question, do people like the technology that we’re rolling out? I mean, all right, we’re human. We’re creatures of habit. We like a lot of the same consistent things over and over, which not everybody likes change. In IT, we embrace change because that’s our lives. That’s what we have to do. We need to be able to. pivot and adapt every time a new technology comes out and figure out how to incorporate it with our organization. Or, or maybe we feel like, Hey, this is just a fad. It’s going to come and go.
Speaker 0 | 24:31.455
So you’ve got to be able to help people through that hump. The biggest example that I can think of that came to my head when you said that was the doctor that was using manila folders forever. And now he gets Epic thrown at him and he’s got to use this crazy EMR, CRM, whatever healthcare management system. And they’re probably some of the toughest people to take on new technology based on being the smartest person in the room and having gone through medical school and all that. I was talking with my doctor the other day about this. And he admits himself, right? Like, no, we are definitely the hardest people in the organization to accept new technology and use it. But after I started using it, the value is so high, I got to get over that hump. So there must be some way that you’re proving value. or coaching that value to end users.
Speaker 1 | 25:18.772
The biggest motivator I’ve found is demonstrating to our superintendents. Let’s use them as an example. They are always a little skeptical when it comes to new technology. That’s a big change in their world. But if I can prove to them and say, hey, this new system and way of doing your job. is going to result in higher bonuses, better performance. You’re going to look more favorable to the entire organization. You are opening yourself up to a promotion. You could actually move from superintendent level to a project manager. That communication to them is so essential that if you lose that and you don’t have that conversation, a lot of times… They’re, they’re going to ignore what you tell them and they’re not going to take that and run with it. So, um, that’s, that’s a little bit of the obstacles that you run into is if you, if you, if you can explain it in a way that shows them that they are, if they take this on, it’s going to improve their lives. And, you know, unfortunately sometimes they don’t, even, even after those conversations, it, it doesn’t. sink in and we have to rely on, Hey, we will go talk to, um, the operations, the COO and say, Hey, can you please help us get some of this, uh, have a conversation with our, with the specific superintendent? He’s, he’s resisting, he’s not changing. And it’s, it’s going to cost us a lot of money if, if we don’t, if we’d let him just continue to go down that path. And, and
Speaker 0 | 27:18.308
You know, what’s in it. So what’s in it for them? The classic, like, you know, show them, you know, the kind of what, what, why, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what I needed to do. And here’s the why. And here’s the benefit to you. And yeah, and go on from there and get cheerleaders to help you. Absolutely. Get other cheerleaders to help you with implementing things. How. Again, I’m going to push you on this. What are you measuring?
Speaker 1 | 27:51.085
Okay. So for us in our department, we use the EOS system in which incorporates things like rocks. So we have rocks in which are developed on a quarterly basis. They’re quarterly goals that start from the top. From the executive team, they get issued rocks to each one of the executives and their specific responsibilities within the organization. I report to the CFO. So one of his rocks in this previous quarter was to help build a better. manpower management system or improve our manpower management system that we’re using currently. That’s not an easy task because…
Speaker 0 | 28:49.466
I don’t even know what that means. You have to explain to me what that means.
Speaker 1 | 28:54.068
Okay. So manpower management is the assignment of individuals to a particular project and also how many people you need on a job. Gotcha.
Speaker 0 | 29:07.876
Enough said. So it’s basically like kind of like deployment of people and ensuring that we’ve got the right people on the job for the right amount of time and not too many people where someone’s sitting around twiddling their thumbs, but not too little people where we’re not making enough progress, really kind of streamlining that process.
Speaker 1 | 29:25.626
Absolutely. And it helps with forecasting how much we’re going to spend on labor for that particular time period. And there’s a lot of pieces that are involved with this. So.
Speaker 0 | 29:37.040
So in steps that to save the day.
Speaker 1 | 29:39.841
Yeah. Well, this is where we go. Okay. Well, we, I’m going to present options to you.
Speaker 0 | 29:47.765
Great. Good, better, and best. Here’s good. Here’s better. Here’s best. Yes. Anyways,
Speaker 1 | 29:53.388
I’ve presented options in which, Hey, there, there is a prepackaged software off the shelf that we could buy that would actually help us right away. I mean, it’s going to take some time learning curve. whatnot to get it up and running. But this does cost money and it’s going to be a little pricey to get it, get it up and running. Second option. Let’s, let’s move this. This actual spreadsheet that we have that we’re currently using that is more complex than rocket science. So it’s pretty unusual, but it’s one of these spreadsheets that’s developed over time and is specific to our company.
Speaker 0 | 30:39.001
CFOs are great with spreadsheets. From being at many startup ISPs and things like that, when it came to pricing out, backhaul and this link and that link all the way back, you know, all the way to the, you know, customer, there were some crazy spreadsheets. Let’s just say that. When I got to a new company and then when I went from one company in the past to a new company, I was like, Hey, where’s the spreadsheet? You’re like, you don’t get access to that spreadsheet. I was like, well, my old company had access to the spreadsheet. I know there’s a spreadsheet. They’re like, no, you don’t get access to that special pricing spreadsheet. I’m like, look, I already know what’s on the spreadsheet. Anyways,
Speaker 1 | 31:12.286
go.
Speaker 0 | 31:15.168
It’s a crazy calculator. It’s a crazy formula. It’s going to calculate, you know, some sort of, you know, margins and return on investment and hours and take into consideration labor and all these other things. But anyways, keep going.
Speaker 1 | 31:27.553
Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, our, our next option that we throw out there, option B is we could simply just, instead of having it on a share drive, let’s put it in SharePoint and give access to the folks that need it. You know, a lot of the problem that we have with that. That particular item specifically is that multiple people are in that spreadsheet at all times. It’s a shared document. It gets corrupted constantly. Yeah, it is an ugly mess. And so the proposal that we came up with was to put it on SharePoint, share it out to who needs it, and only give access to people to make changes for specific people. You got to check it out, check it back in. And… That is an honest question and it doesn’t cost a lot of money. So that’s, that’s the direction that they’re choosing to go with that. And that was our rock.
Speaker 0 | 32:25.302
Okay. I was going to say, did you heavily weigh the software piece? Were you heavily shooting for the software?
Speaker 1 | 32:34.211
So I, I, I have to say I’m guilty of.
Speaker 0 | 32:38.956
really wanting wanting that let me just sad sad sad it’s enough enough okay can i just ask you one question which one’s the cheapest like uh the sharepoint okay we’re going with that uh next item no so so but but you know i planted you know at that point it gave me an opportunity to plant a seed and say okay because if this doesn’t work because if the spreadsheet ends up being sloppy and a failure then you know next time you gotta look at that other option
Speaker 1 | 33:07.512
And so the seed is there. We’ve looked at software. There are some things that we have to overcome. You know, the other big issue is the fact that people want a technology that you’re replacing another technology with to act exactly the same. And you’ve got to explain to them somehow and convey that we’re not.
Speaker 0 | 33:34.932
it’s not a one-for-one um transition from here it’s it’s it’s not going to act the same way going from from this software to this next software you’ve literally got to make a you know and that’s back to the seven habits of highly effective people thing you literally have to make a paradigm shift when you move to a new like technology of some sort right it’s how do you go from Microsoft 365 or Teams to Google Docs? How do you go from, I don’t know, using all those applications to G Suite? People do it. And they do it in huge, massive companies too.
Speaker 1 | 34:22.933
We’ve actually lived that with going from paper drawings, paper hand coffee drawings to… tablet-based drawings in which we issued tablets out to the field and all the drawings are on the tablets now the resistance was just through the roof because these guys have their entire lives that’s all i’ve known is paper physical paper yeah but once once we were able to get them get that in their hands get their mind to change and shift the paradigm shift was massive and we got so much momentum across the organization There’s improvement on productivity. We don’t have to go wait for a new sheet of paper coming from the reprographics company, print it out and ship to the job site. So there’s a lot of production time that’s being lost just waiting on drawings to be delivered to the job site.
Speaker 0 | 35:20.659
That’s a great example. That’s a beautiful example.
Speaker 1 | 35:25.021
So that was something that we did. We were able to get traction on that and be able to push through the organization. And right now, our superintendents, if you tell them that, hey, you’re going to have paper drawings on this job, they will scream. fight for their iPads and they will tell you that there’s no way we’re going to build this job off paper drawings.
Speaker 0 | 35:51.191
Huh? Yeah, that’s, um, I can imagine. I can really imagine the productivity from that. Yeah. Not to mention the ability to edit and make changes and have instant access and share across the world. Um,
Speaker 1 | 36:08.543
but the collaboration piece is, is huge to be able to. let somebody know that, hey, there’s a problem that exists right here. I can take a picture of it and place it in the drawings so somebody else in another trade can come and fix that problem and not have to you wash your hands of it, basically, and say, I’ve handed it off to the next person, and that next person needs to deal with it. So if I
Speaker 0 | 36:37.550
If I offered you a job today for $5 million a year and I put you in charge of the, I’m making this up off the top of my head right now. I’m really, I’m firing. I’m feeling this. If I give you $5 million a year, you only have to work four hours a week. This sounds great.
Speaker 1 | 36:59.805
I’m already in. I don’t care what it is.
Speaker 0 | 37:03.288
You’ve got to make the. best hiring decisions for every IT director, at least four IT directors a month for every company, and you’ve only got four hours a week to pick each one. I want to ask you, what is the question that you would ask them that would tell you right away, this is the guy? And I’m not saying there is one question. You might have to ask a ton of follow-up questions, but what would be your first question to ask an IT director? that would really determine his level of leadership?
Speaker 1 | 37:41.603
I’d want to know what results they’ve had with their business. Give me a list of all of your results. I’m a very firm believer in what you’ve accomplished and what you’ve done throughout your career. That speaks volumes. And I’d also want to know of their failures as well. I mean, that’s, that’s the other thing is you need to be able to take risks and be willing to fail and still show that, Hey, that didn’t, that didn’t stop me. I continued down that path. So, I mean, that’s a,
Speaker 0 | 38:27.955
how do you measure, um, how do you measure results?
Speaker 1 | 38:32.958
Through our results, we sit down and on that quarterly basis with rocks, did we actually accomplish what we set out to accomplish?
Speaker 0 | 38:46.166
Give me three things. Give me three bullet points that we can give to IT directors out there in the field right now. We can say, hey, you can measure this labor before and after productivity in this piece or straight up money. I mean, what is it? Like, what are the biggest eye openers for your CFO that if you went back and you gave him these three, look at what we did right now, what would he just be like, oh my gosh, jump out of his seat and high five you?
Speaker 1 | 39:12.839
Well, one of the primary things is improved productivity. And I talked about this in this example of converting over from paper drawings to…
Speaker 0 | 39:24.584
Yeah, so how do we measure that? Yeah, so how do we measure that? I know the numbers are there. I’m just saying, what were the numbers?
Speaker 1 | 39:32.949
Yeah. The numbers, unfortunately, it’s a little bit more of a soft cost, but you can see the performance of the projects. I mean, our projects,
Speaker 0 | 39:45.097
you can look at-I’m okay with soft costs. I was in sales for years, okay? We’d always be like, here’s the hard cost, but- the soft costs, you know, and then you go through this return on investment. Like, think about this, think about this. I know it’s not right there in front of you on the piece of paper, but this is what you’re going to be able to achieve. Right.
Speaker 1 | 40:03.686
Yeah. So, so, I mean, ultimately there’s, there’s a lot of soft costs, benefits from the, throughout the organization when you start looking at that. But you also look at performance, jobs, performance. Were they more productive? Were they able to complete the job in fewer hours than they were estimated in? Was it estimated to be 1,000 hours of work, and did you come in at 900 hours? Or did you exceed that? I mean, where are we at? Those are the things that we’d like to look at, and we do look at productivity. But my piece, you know, the IT piece, you can’t directly say 100% that that was all IT. You know, with construction, there’s a lot of variables. And it’s not just construction. There’s a lot of other industries out there that there’s variables that you really don’t have control over. If, for instance, the steel that was going to a project was two weeks late and you had a crew sitting around for… that two weeks, that’s really not IT’s fault. That’s just happens to be the issue that happened to deal the job, the bad, bad hair.
Speaker 0 | 41:25.207
This is where data is going to, the future of data and measuring and AI is going to really make a huge difference. Really it is. When we start, it’s really, I mean, again, it’s coming down to data points and how much, you know, where can we start measuring more data? or where can we start grabbing data from? It has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. I’ll give you the final word. If there was one piece of advice for anyone out there listening, what would that be?
Speaker 1 | 41:56.633
Enjoy your job. I mean, that’s one thing that I see a lot of folks in the industry that are not super happy with what they’re doing. It’s not exciting. Reignite. Find something that you have. you’re passionate about and work towards that. And that’s something that in your position, you are steering the company down a road and you have that control and you can figure out what is going to help the entire organization. You have the ability to help the entire organization by the decisions you make at your level.
Speaker 0 | 42:38.675
Yeah. Dad, thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 1 | 42:42.630
Thank you, Phil. I really appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So thank you very much.
Speaker 0 | 42:47.635
Yes, sir.
Speaker 0 | 00:09.664
Welcome back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds. Today we are talking with Thad Lutkins. He is Director of Equipment and IT at LPR Construction. That’s really not a small thing whatsoever because you have… a ridiculous amount of kind of like vehicles and stuff that you guys like lease and rent and take care of and all that stuff out there. Right. So first of all, welcome to the show and, um, let’s just plug your company for us. What are you guys doing?
Speaker 1 | 00:37.357
Oh, thank you, Phil. I appreciate you inviting me to be over here. Um, and, and your podcasts are great. So give you a little plug there. I’ve been listening to those and I’ve been very impressed with,
Speaker 0 | 00:49.123
uh, and thank you for reminding me you’ve had on here. Yeah, no, thank you. And honestly, you’re reminding me to do something that I always forget to do that everyone, like I have podcast coaches and they tell me to do these things and I never do them. And that is, if you like the podcast, could you please go on to Apple iTunes or whatever it is, search that. It’s not that easy to do. Please do it for me. You’d really be doing me a favor if you like this and rate our podcast and give us an honest review, right? Honestly, give us an honest review on whatever the platform it is that you’re listening to. So Thad, thank you. moving on to construction vehicles.
Speaker 1 | 01:24.081
Yeah, so I, you know, started my career here at LPR 21 years ago. It’s quite a while ago, but it’s been a fun ride. The company has been in business for 41 years, and that’s not an easy task in construction. It’s something that we’ve evolved. considerably. And I was brought in to change things over with our IT side of the business. IT is not typically something you think and couple together with construction, but our company, we’re spread across the entire United States. We erect steel for large buildings, some of the buildings that we’ve come across and built. all the steel in the Atlanta Braves stadium. If you’ve seen that, that stadium is just beautiful and gorgeous in Colorado. Phil, I know you’re from Colorado Coors field. We installed all the steel in Coors field. We don’t do just stadiums. We also do large rocket stands. That’s another thing that we’ve been building as of recently.
Speaker 0 | 02:38.584
Like literally the thing that, that holds the rocket standing up straight that the rocket takes off from.
Speaker 1 | 02:45.008
Absolutely. Yep. So we’ve been doing a lot of that. We’ve been working with NASA. We’ve been working with a few other, I can’t really disclose those companies, but a few other companies out there that do launches in Florida and Texas as well.
Speaker 0 | 03:06.083
Okay. So Wicked Cool. What’s even cooler is that you’ve been at the company for like 20 years. Is that right?
Speaker 1 | 03:14.248
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 03:15.408
Do they give you like, do you get like a pen or a watch or something? You know, like, Hey, thank you for being with us for 20 years. Here’s a pen. Um, I’m joking. You’re like, no, I didn’t, I didn’t even get that. Um, but that’s okay. You don’t need that. Just, you know, just please let me know that it is valued here. That’s all I need to know. And we’re going to get onto that, but real quick, seriously, 1999, what did the network look like there when you first came over? Were you, I mean, information systems manager in 1999. What were you doing? What were you doing back then?
Speaker 1 | 03:48.461
I was a one man shop at that point in time. I got showed up. We had one server, which was Novell NetWare 4.1. You can remember that. Novell NetWare group wise was on that server,
Speaker 0 | 04:04.554
which is where I was in 1999. You’d be like, no, Phil, you wouldn’t remember anything, but keep going. It’s not a good story.
Speaker 1 | 04:14.521
It’s probably a good story,
Speaker 0 | 04:16.823
not a good picture. But go on.
Speaker 1 | 04:20.725
Yeah, so I show up here. We have no remote connectivity. We are actually taking hard copy documents. And fax machine was big at that point in time. But we didn’t even get to that point where we were faxing stuff. We were taking invoices. documents, construction bids. All that was put into a manila folder, put into a FedEx envelope, and shipped to the office or shipped to the job site, depending on which direction you need to go. So it was all snail mail was our was our mode of communication, which
Speaker 0 | 05:01.941
Isn’t that kind of cool? There’s some people out there that are probably like, what? The fax machine was big? The fax machine was big. That was a big deal. That’s crazy. When we talk about that now, we’re kind of like, huh.
Speaker 1 | 05:16.050
Right, right. Fax machine, it’s hard to find one. I mean, if you ever need to, you have to go hunt one down. It used to be that, shoot, everybody, every business that you went to, that was the pinnacle of their technology. Technology was like. a fax machine. It’s a Hewlett Packard. Wow. You’re, you’re spending a lot of money there. But that we, we truly evolved. You know, I saw that I said, boy, we, we, we really need to expand what we have. And as far as capabilities, we need to start leveraging technology. First and foremost, let’s look at what we have as far as our network. Let’s Let’s focus on what exactly we can do in the short term to improve everybody’s lives. And one of those things was, let’s get rid of Novell. Novell serves its purpose. What did it do?
Speaker 0 | 06:17.015
What were you guys using it for day to day?
Speaker 1 | 06:19.776
So it was a file server, basically. I mean, it was a file server. And it also did like what Microsoft does now with Active Directory. It had that sort of… same structure in Novell network in which it would manage your users. You could assign email addresses. It would create a group wise account for you so you could email back and forth. It was a solid product, but like a lot of technology and technology companies where they sit on their laurels and they feel like they have such a… Good product. They don’t need to innovate. They don’t need to adapt. They don’t need to change. And they continue going down that same path. And they struggle when newer technologies come out that are easier to use, that have a GUI interface. I mean, Novell did not have a GUI interface. It was all command line driven.
Speaker 0 | 07:20.859
Like F1, F2, Shift, F1, 3, that type of stuff.
Speaker 1 | 07:25.102
Oh, it was crazy. It was crazy. Yeah. So there’s a lot of, I mean. Eventually, they started integrating their GUI interface, but for the most part, it was all just text-based. And so it made it very complicated when you had issues. You had to call somebody to get support. And back then, really, you didn’t have like pull up your web page. type in Novell Network and Google that and try to figure out exactly what’s going on with your issue. You had to actually reach out to Novell specifically and get one of their support team staff to help you out. And hopefully it wasn’t in the middle of the night because they didn’t have a 24-7 call center.
Speaker 0 | 08:14.613
Just in general, would you say software support is worse than telecom support? Or, I mean, what do you think? I’m just thinking of like support. How’s your vendor support in general when you call vendors?
Speaker 1 | 08:29.082
You know, our vendor support, it depends on the product. But if you’re going to be looking at software versus, you know, physical telecom, let’s say cell phone, we actually have, we’ve broken up with our support system on the telecom. And we actually use a third-party vendor to help us navigate that. Because we will spend 15, 20 minutes on a simple password change for somebody’s voicemail call. One of the help desk folks, I don’t want him spending 15, 20 minutes or even longer just to change a voicemail password. This is… you know, now it’s, it’s a little more automated with website, but this was, you know, three years ago,
Speaker 0 | 09:26.694
you know,
Speaker 1 | 09:27.034
thank you.
Speaker 0 | 09:27.495
We call those, um, we call those Mac attacks, move and change. I got like a Mac attack, you know? Um, I had a Mac attack the other night. If I, if I let myself go, I’ll, I’ll eat two or three big Macs at once. I’ve been on like, on a pretty good diet. I’ve been on a pretty good diet here for like a month and a half. And every time I drive by McDonald’s, my wife thinks I’m crazy. She hates it anyway. She’s like, how can you eat that crap? I’m like, I still, I could eat three of them right now. Um,
Speaker 1 | 09:55.040
more importantly,
Speaker 0 | 09:57.163
more importantly, Over the years, you’ve been through a lot of, I would say, changes. You kind of were hinting at it when you said, you know, we’re good. We don’t need to innovate. So you’ve seen that. You’ve seen kind of the ebb and flow, maybe the sine curve of executive management and having to request upgrades and changes. And you’re not the only one. There’s many other IT directors, managers, CTOs, whatever out there that have dealt with the… They may have had a vision. They may have known that they need to change. They may have a vision for kind of moving the technology forward and run into various different walls, so to speak. How do you justify upgrades and spend where you might not necessarily have the money in the budget or maybe you guys don’t run off a very strict budget or whatever it is, but how are you selling? these things to executive management at a construction company where you might have some people that, not to stereotype construction people at all, but you might have a little bit more pushback than say a technology firm?
Speaker 1 | 11:15.746
That’s a great question. And really, that’s something I’ve been working on this past year and something I’ve really been focusing on now. What I had to do is look at the big picture, look at the entire organization. We at LPR, we have a very forward-thinking CEO, Link Turner. He’s done a fantastic job of bringing in different systems to run the business. One of those systems that he’s brought in and… I don’t know if you’ve heard of it or not, but it’s called Traction. It’s a book called Traction. Traction is written by Geno Wickman. A little background on Geno. His dad was an executive management consultant, went into companies, had them read specific books and bring those ideas to the organization to steer and get the company moving. the direction that they needed to go to be successful.
Speaker 0 | 12:29.292
Gotcha. Well,
Speaker 1 | 12:30.632
he really went in and took all of the different books that are out there, the management books, and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
Speaker 0 | 12:41.555
Sure.
Speaker 1 | 12:42.035
That’s great. Pulled all the really focused items that he felt like really drove the organization and pulled those and highlighted those and made that. part of a complete entrepreneurial system. So there’s an entrepreneurial organization system, operating system. So it’s called the EOS that we use in our company. And part of the EOS that we run and we’ve established is the fact that when you look at the entire organization, you have to… Really focus on what your core values are. That’s one of the big principles is figuring out your core values of your organization. And those are what truly drive change and drive you to move forward and expand your capabilities as a company. Then with those core values, you establish what’s called a VTO. And that’s a vision traction. organizer that I’m just so thrilled. We haven’t had that. This came into play maybe three or four years ago in the organization. And the vision traction organizer, it lays out, first of all, what your core values are. You know what your core values are and you measure it against those in your department. It also lays out a… one-year plan on what we are going to accomplish in this next year as an organization.
Speaker 0 | 14:28.012
Yep.
Speaker 1 | 14:29.473
Then it pulls in a three-year plan. So you got the short term, a little bit longer term. Yep. And then it actually makes a leap out into a 10-year plan in which those are the big audacious goals that everybody puts out there. They’re scary goals like we’re going to be a… billion dollar company uh by 2030 we’re gonna there’s there’s a lot of big goals in there but The nice thing is, is that we have these all listed and shared with the entire organization.
Speaker 0 | 15:06.829
So talk to me. So how does this apply to, how are you taking this and applying it to IT in your department? And I remember when we talked briefly about this before, you talked about this people analyzer thing, which is really, I got to know about that. I got to know about that. So how are you, okay. So like, you know, you got, you have the vision. I’m assuming that. trickles down to your department, you have a vision for your department and how are you, how is your department, how are you mixing this in? Like, so first of all, I think, I think the big thing here is a, you’re on a level of communication with executive management and understanding, you understand very clearly from the top down, you understand very clearly what the vision of the company is from a one year, three year, 10 year plan. And how now is IT going to contribute to that plan?
Speaker 1 | 15:57.441
Yeah. So And so it’s no secret. We know what the goals are. I have to tell you in the past, that wasn’t clear. It really wasn’t clear. It was something that was an enigma. You had to guess. And I know there’s a lot of other IT directors that are out there. They’re in that position right now.
Speaker 0 | 16:17.755
They are in that position now and they don’t have the benefit of working for a company with a visionary leader, right? Like you said, Link, right? Link Turner. who’s going to bring in all these systems and processes and everything like that, they could go have those conversations with executive management and say, hey, what are we trying to do here?
Speaker 1 | 16:38.022
Yes. And prior to that, I did drive a lot of those conversations. But it was interesting, Phil. You think that the and I’m not knocking anybody that was in the executive team, but it it was a little different twist and a different view than from one executive to the other.
Speaker 0 | 17:01.924
Because we’re humans and we wake up every day and we have a family and we’re basically trying to put food on the table and live our lives and do these things. So, yeah, it probably would be different from one to the next.
Speaker 1 | 17:11.648
Right, right. So it’s a little interpretation. This makes it a little more concrete in which I can look this over and I can see what our one-year goals are when it comes to budget time. I pull this up and I look at, okay, what am I trying to accomplish here? One of the big things is we want a culture of accountability. That’s one of the one-year goals that we have, culture of accountability, and we are profit protectors. I need to put my business cap on and think of it using an IT. background and being able to adapt and adjust to what the organization is trying to accomplish. And, you know, if I’m a profit protector, number one, I need to be very concerned about any ransomware attacks. I need to be very concerned about any viruses. I need to be concerned about people hacking into the system, stealing confidential information. There’s a… There’s all kinds of different ways that you can take that and view that actual goal that we have in the one year goal. And we can we can apply that. I also took it a next step. If we’re holding people accountable now, that’s part of that whole piece.
Speaker 0 | 18:40.499
Yeah. It makes it easier for end users. It makes it easier to tell end users like, hey, you know, you’re accountable for not clicking on that stupid thing.
Speaker 1 | 18:49.886
Yes, you’re accountable.
Speaker 0 | 18:53.289
Because you would kill the profit.
Speaker 1 | 18:56.351
Yes. Yeah. If you have to spend a million dollars on a ransomware attack, there goes all of your profit out the door and you’re stuck holding the bag. And that is my responsibility. That’s the way I look at it. It’s like, okay. As the IT director, I need to make sure I’m communicating that to all users. Also, on top of that, we are also looking at if we have an issue, something comes up, we can hold other people accountable. If they continue to behave that way, we have this to back us up and say, hey, we’ve talked to you about this. You have issues. Either we’re going to take…
Speaker 0 | 19:39.750
access completely away or um we’re going to give you the fax machine back one of the other um um that’s like you know we’re taking email away you now must mail things again um what’s the people analyzer or is that the people analyzer and that’s how you’re analyzing people
Speaker 1 | 20:02.629
via the vision. Yes, that’s a great tool that we use to evaluate. We do this on a quarterly basis. Part of the system requires that you give feedback to your employees on a quarterly basis, which is amazing because most of the time you have annual reviews and quarterly is not something that is typically done throughout the business world. But we sit down, we have a scorecard that we go through that’s actually the first three components of the people analyzer is do you get it? Do you get your job? Do you want your job? Big question. Maybe somebody’s fantastic at what they do, but they just absolutely hate what they do. and don’t really want it? Or do you have the capacity to actually do the job that you’ve been asked to and you’ve been hired for?
Speaker 0 | 21:08.989
Capacity, ability, do you have the talent level? Can you do it? Like you’re a heart surgeon, but you never went through medical school, like that type of thing.
Speaker 1 | 21:17.634
Exactly, exactly. So those are the three core first questions that are asked. And if anybody gets a minus on there, that is a red flag that… they potentially are in the wrong seat in that position or potentially the seat is not the proper seat for the organization. So you’ve got to look at it very clearly. And is it something that they can overcome? You need to think about that. If it is that example that you used, are they going to be able to go to medical school in the next six months and figure it out? Yeah. Not likely. So you have to evaluate, is this person, is he going, are they going to be able to make that transition to the next level? And if not, then really, ultimately, you put them on notice, you let them know that you’ve got the next quarter to work on this and improve it. If you don’t come back with improvements, then. Sorry, that’s strike two. And if you come back again, strike three, you’re out.
Speaker 0 | 22:29.513
So I’m assuming you like what you do. I’m assuming you want to keep doing what you’re doing because you’ve been there for 20 years. And I’m pretty sure you have the capacity to do IT. So for your scorecard, I think we’re getting a check mark on every box. Let me ask you this and apply all this stuff that we’re talking about to it. How would you say your end users in your company, do they get IT? Do they want the systems that you’re putting in place? And are you providing systems that give them the ability to do their job better? And how do you know that you are?
Speaker 1 | 23:17.840
Yeah, that’s definitely one of the big questions. are are we adding value is really what you’re getting at is it adding value to the organization or yeah and then i’m going to go even a step further and how do you prove that you’re adding a value how are you measuring that right yeah so it’s it’s funny that you you talk about that because this is also can be tied into um the the eos system that we’re using that they were in the organization um but you know To answer your first question, do people like the technology that we’re rolling out? I mean, all right, we’re human. We’re creatures of habit. We like a lot of the same consistent things over and over, which not everybody likes change. In IT, we embrace change because that’s our lives. That’s what we have to do. We need to be able to. pivot and adapt every time a new technology comes out and figure out how to incorporate it with our organization. Or, or maybe we feel like, Hey, this is just a fad. It’s going to come and go.
Speaker 0 | 24:31.455
So you’ve got to be able to help people through that hump. The biggest example that I can think of that came to my head when you said that was the doctor that was using manila folders forever. And now he gets Epic thrown at him and he’s got to use this crazy EMR, CRM, whatever healthcare management system. And they’re probably some of the toughest people to take on new technology based on being the smartest person in the room and having gone through medical school and all that. I was talking with my doctor the other day about this. And he admits himself, right? Like, no, we are definitely the hardest people in the organization to accept new technology and use it. But after I started using it, the value is so high, I got to get over that hump. So there must be some way that you’re proving value. or coaching that value to end users.
Speaker 1 | 25:18.772
The biggest motivator I’ve found is demonstrating to our superintendents. Let’s use them as an example. They are always a little skeptical when it comes to new technology. That’s a big change in their world. But if I can prove to them and say, hey, this new system and way of doing your job. is going to result in higher bonuses, better performance. You’re going to look more favorable to the entire organization. You are opening yourself up to a promotion. You could actually move from superintendent level to a project manager. That communication to them is so essential that if you lose that and you don’t have that conversation, a lot of times… They’re, they’re going to ignore what you tell them and they’re not going to take that and run with it. So, um, that’s, that’s a little bit of the obstacles that you run into is if you, if you, if you can explain it in a way that shows them that they are, if they take this on, it’s going to improve their lives. And, you know, unfortunately sometimes they don’t, even, even after those conversations, it, it doesn’t. sink in and we have to rely on, Hey, we will go talk to, um, the operations, the COO and say, Hey, can you please help us get some of this, uh, have a conversation with our, with the specific superintendent? He’s, he’s resisting, he’s not changing. And it’s, it’s going to cost us a lot of money if, if we don’t, if we’d let him just continue to go down that path. And, and
Speaker 0 | 27:18.308
You know, what’s in it. So what’s in it for them? The classic, like, you know, show them, you know, the kind of what, what, why, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s what I needed to do. And here’s the why. And here’s the benefit to you. And yeah, and go on from there and get cheerleaders to help you. Absolutely. Get other cheerleaders to help you with implementing things. How. Again, I’m going to push you on this. What are you measuring?
Speaker 1 | 27:51.085
Okay. So for us in our department, we use the EOS system in which incorporates things like rocks. So we have rocks in which are developed on a quarterly basis. They’re quarterly goals that start from the top. From the executive team, they get issued rocks to each one of the executives and their specific responsibilities within the organization. I report to the CFO. So one of his rocks in this previous quarter was to help build a better. manpower management system or improve our manpower management system that we’re using currently. That’s not an easy task because…
Speaker 0 | 28:49.466
I don’t even know what that means. You have to explain to me what that means.
Speaker 1 | 28:54.068
Okay. So manpower management is the assignment of individuals to a particular project and also how many people you need on a job. Gotcha.
Speaker 0 | 29:07.876
Enough said. So it’s basically like kind of like deployment of people and ensuring that we’ve got the right people on the job for the right amount of time and not too many people where someone’s sitting around twiddling their thumbs, but not too little people where we’re not making enough progress, really kind of streamlining that process.
Speaker 1 | 29:25.626
Absolutely. And it helps with forecasting how much we’re going to spend on labor for that particular time period. And there’s a lot of pieces that are involved with this. So.
Speaker 0 | 29:37.040
So in steps that to save the day.
Speaker 1 | 29:39.841
Yeah. Well, this is where we go. Okay. Well, we, I’m going to present options to you.
Speaker 0 | 29:47.765
Great. Good, better, and best. Here’s good. Here’s better. Here’s best. Yes. Anyways,
Speaker 1 | 29:53.388
I’ve presented options in which, Hey, there, there is a prepackaged software off the shelf that we could buy that would actually help us right away. I mean, it’s going to take some time learning curve. whatnot to get it up and running. But this does cost money and it’s going to be a little pricey to get it, get it up and running. Second option. Let’s, let’s move this. This actual spreadsheet that we have that we’re currently using that is more complex than rocket science. So it’s pretty unusual, but it’s one of these spreadsheets that’s developed over time and is specific to our company.
Speaker 0 | 30:39.001
CFOs are great with spreadsheets. From being at many startup ISPs and things like that, when it came to pricing out, backhaul and this link and that link all the way back, you know, all the way to the, you know, customer, there were some crazy spreadsheets. Let’s just say that. When I got to a new company and then when I went from one company in the past to a new company, I was like, Hey, where’s the spreadsheet? You’re like, you don’t get access to that spreadsheet. I was like, well, my old company had access to the spreadsheet. I know there’s a spreadsheet. They’re like, no, you don’t get access to that special pricing spreadsheet. I’m like, look, I already know what’s on the spreadsheet. Anyways,
Speaker 1 | 31:12.286
go.
Speaker 0 | 31:15.168
It’s a crazy calculator. It’s a crazy formula. It’s going to calculate, you know, some sort of, you know, margins and return on investment and hours and take into consideration labor and all these other things. But anyways, keep going.
Speaker 1 | 31:27.553
Yeah. Yeah. So, so, you know, our, our next option that we throw out there, option B is we could simply just, instead of having it on a share drive, let’s put it in SharePoint and give access to the folks that need it. You know, a lot of the problem that we have with that. That particular item specifically is that multiple people are in that spreadsheet at all times. It’s a shared document. It gets corrupted constantly. Yeah, it is an ugly mess. And so the proposal that we came up with was to put it on SharePoint, share it out to who needs it, and only give access to people to make changes for specific people. You got to check it out, check it back in. And… That is an honest question and it doesn’t cost a lot of money. So that’s, that’s the direction that they’re choosing to go with that. And that was our rock.
Speaker 0 | 32:25.302
Okay. I was going to say, did you heavily weigh the software piece? Were you heavily shooting for the software?
Speaker 1 | 32:34.211
So I, I, I have to say I’m guilty of.
Speaker 0 | 32:38.956
really wanting wanting that let me just sad sad sad it’s enough enough okay can i just ask you one question which one’s the cheapest like uh the sharepoint okay we’re going with that uh next item no so so but but you know i planted you know at that point it gave me an opportunity to plant a seed and say okay because if this doesn’t work because if the spreadsheet ends up being sloppy and a failure then you know next time you gotta look at that other option
Speaker 1 | 33:07.512
And so the seed is there. We’ve looked at software. There are some things that we have to overcome. You know, the other big issue is the fact that people want a technology that you’re replacing another technology with to act exactly the same. And you’ve got to explain to them somehow and convey that we’re not.
Speaker 0 | 33:34.932
it’s not a one-for-one um transition from here it’s it’s it’s not going to act the same way going from from this software to this next software you’ve literally got to make a you know and that’s back to the seven habits of highly effective people thing you literally have to make a paradigm shift when you move to a new like technology of some sort right it’s how do you go from Microsoft 365 or Teams to Google Docs? How do you go from, I don’t know, using all those applications to G Suite? People do it. And they do it in huge, massive companies too.
Speaker 1 | 34:22.933
We’ve actually lived that with going from paper drawings, paper hand coffee drawings to… tablet-based drawings in which we issued tablets out to the field and all the drawings are on the tablets now the resistance was just through the roof because these guys have their entire lives that’s all i’ve known is paper physical paper yeah but once once we were able to get them get that in their hands get their mind to change and shift the paradigm shift was massive and we got so much momentum across the organization There’s improvement on productivity. We don’t have to go wait for a new sheet of paper coming from the reprographics company, print it out and ship to the job site. So there’s a lot of production time that’s being lost just waiting on drawings to be delivered to the job site.
Speaker 0 | 35:20.659
That’s a great example. That’s a beautiful example.
Speaker 1 | 35:25.021
So that was something that we did. We were able to get traction on that and be able to push through the organization. And right now, our superintendents, if you tell them that, hey, you’re going to have paper drawings on this job, they will scream. fight for their iPads and they will tell you that there’s no way we’re going to build this job off paper drawings.
Speaker 0 | 35:51.191
Huh? Yeah, that’s, um, I can imagine. I can really imagine the productivity from that. Yeah. Not to mention the ability to edit and make changes and have instant access and share across the world. Um,
Speaker 1 | 36:08.543
but the collaboration piece is, is huge to be able to. let somebody know that, hey, there’s a problem that exists right here. I can take a picture of it and place it in the drawings so somebody else in another trade can come and fix that problem and not have to you wash your hands of it, basically, and say, I’ve handed it off to the next person, and that next person needs to deal with it. So if I
Speaker 0 | 36:37.550
If I offered you a job today for $5 million a year and I put you in charge of the, I’m making this up off the top of my head right now. I’m really, I’m firing. I’m feeling this. If I give you $5 million a year, you only have to work four hours a week. This sounds great.
Speaker 1 | 36:59.805
I’m already in. I don’t care what it is.
Speaker 0 | 37:03.288
You’ve got to make the. best hiring decisions for every IT director, at least four IT directors a month for every company, and you’ve only got four hours a week to pick each one. I want to ask you, what is the question that you would ask them that would tell you right away, this is the guy? And I’m not saying there is one question. You might have to ask a ton of follow-up questions, but what would be your first question to ask an IT director? that would really determine his level of leadership?
Speaker 1 | 37:41.603
I’d want to know what results they’ve had with their business. Give me a list of all of your results. I’m a very firm believer in what you’ve accomplished and what you’ve done throughout your career. That speaks volumes. And I’d also want to know of their failures as well. I mean, that’s, that’s the other thing is you need to be able to take risks and be willing to fail and still show that, Hey, that didn’t, that didn’t stop me. I continued down that path. So, I mean, that’s a,
Speaker 0 | 38:27.955
how do you measure, um, how do you measure results?
Speaker 1 | 38:32.958
Through our results, we sit down and on that quarterly basis with rocks, did we actually accomplish what we set out to accomplish?
Speaker 0 | 38:46.166
Give me three things. Give me three bullet points that we can give to IT directors out there in the field right now. We can say, hey, you can measure this labor before and after productivity in this piece or straight up money. I mean, what is it? Like, what are the biggest eye openers for your CFO that if you went back and you gave him these three, look at what we did right now, what would he just be like, oh my gosh, jump out of his seat and high five you?
Speaker 1 | 39:12.839
Well, one of the primary things is improved productivity. And I talked about this in this example of converting over from paper drawings to…
Speaker 0 | 39:24.584
Yeah, so how do we measure that? Yeah, so how do we measure that? I know the numbers are there. I’m just saying, what were the numbers?
Speaker 1 | 39:32.949
Yeah. The numbers, unfortunately, it’s a little bit more of a soft cost, but you can see the performance of the projects. I mean, our projects,
Speaker 0 | 39:45.097
you can look at-I’m okay with soft costs. I was in sales for years, okay? We’d always be like, here’s the hard cost, but- the soft costs, you know, and then you go through this return on investment. Like, think about this, think about this. I know it’s not right there in front of you on the piece of paper, but this is what you’re going to be able to achieve. Right.
Speaker 1 | 40:03.686
Yeah. So, so, I mean, ultimately there’s, there’s a lot of soft costs, benefits from the, throughout the organization when you start looking at that. But you also look at performance, jobs, performance. Were they more productive? Were they able to complete the job in fewer hours than they were estimated in? Was it estimated to be 1,000 hours of work, and did you come in at 900 hours? Or did you exceed that? I mean, where are we at? Those are the things that we’d like to look at, and we do look at productivity. But my piece, you know, the IT piece, you can’t directly say 100% that that was all IT. You know, with construction, there’s a lot of variables. And it’s not just construction. There’s a lot of other industries out there that there’s variables that you really don’t have control over. If, for instance, the steel that was going to a project was two weeks late and you had a crew sitting around for… that two weeks, that’s really not IT’s fault. That’s just happens to be the issue that happened to deal the job, the bad, bad hair.
Speaker 0 | 41:25.207
This is where data is going to, the future of data and measuring and AI is going to really make a huge difference. Really it is. When we start, it’s really, I mean, again, it’s coming down to data points and how much, you know, where can we start measuring more data? or where can we start grabbing data from? It has been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. I’ll give you the final word. If there was one piece of advice for anyone out there listening, what would that be?
Speaker 1 | 41:56.633
Enjoy your job. I mean, that’s one thing that I see a lot of folks in the industry that are not super happy with what they’re doing. It’s not exciting. Reignite. Find something that you have. you’re passionate about and work towards that. And that’s something that in your position, you are steering the company down a road and you have that control and you can figure out what is going to help the entire organization. You have the ability to help the entire organization by the decisions you make at your level.
Speaker 0 | 42:38.675
Yeah. Dad, thank you so much for being on the show.
Speaker 1 | 42:42.630
Thank you, Phil. I really appreciate it. I thoroughly enjoyed it. So thank you very much.
Speaker 0 | 42:47.635
Yes, sir.
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